


better

by Askance



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood and Gore, Comfort, M/M, No Plot/Plotless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 13:26:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6081054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askance/pseuds/Askance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How many, says Sam, through grit teeth, imagining his jaw splintering. Twenty-four, says Dean, I think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	better

Sam's full of birdshot—forty-seven.

 

Dean, who's got the forceps like giant scissors and is dressed more in Sam's blood than in any clothes, sitting behind him, their thighs snug up against one another on all sides, pulling each one out. Sam bent forward over his knees, sweating and heaving. Too tired to keep crying out every time Dean pushes the forcep tips inside him and clutches, turns, twists, the bones in his wrist popping, his hot breath humid on the nape of Sam's neck, little grunts of exertion, there _._ Each one, tiny balls of steel, glazed in blood, dropping with musical cameraderie on the stained white towel pinned under Dean's leg. Important to count them, to get them all out.

 

How many, says Sam, through grit teeth, imagining his jaw splintering. Twenty-four, says Dean, I think.

 

The smaller ones are harder, difficult to see by lamplight, and the blinking neon on the road outside doesn't reach very far. Dean plants his fingers on either side of the holes and pulls apart, can't afford to be gentle with the forceps, pushing twisting grabbing, Sam bites down hard enough on his lip to draw blood—focuses on it for a minute, sucking on it.

 

Dean hikes his leg up on Sam's right side, shakes out his hand, whistles low under his breath against Sam's neck. Duck next time, he says.

 

Ha ha.

 

Thirty-one. Sam's thinking about tattoos. Figures this hurts more, though the drumming of the needle against his chest a few years back was up there on the list of worsts. Dean had drawn blood then, too, but at least he'd gotten to return the favor, jamming too deep on a corner of the star, leaning down by instinct to plant his lips on the broken skin the way a kid sucks on a bleeding finger. Ink, turns out, tastes like shit.

 

How bad's it look?

 

Ever seen Swiss cheese? says Dean.

 

He'd told him, don't buy a fucking tattoo gun off the Internet, and sure enough it was a month before their skin settled, but they shared it, shook black scabs out of their clothes side by side.

 

Ooh, says Dean, mastering the deepest shot, apparently—feels like he's trying to pick Sam's spine apart. Drops the ball of steel into Sam's hand and goes back to work, and Sam rolls it across his palm, one shoulder flexing up and coming down. Cracks his neck and feels Dean's fingers plant, pull, split, almost done, this is, uh, thirty-six. Of course the stretch from thirty-six to forty-seven has never been a longer one.

 

Sam's mouth is full of blood so he sets the shot between his teeth, holds it there precariously.

 

I need a drink.

 

Nuh-uh.

 

Only thing they've got is Jack and right now it's for cleaning, not for drinking. Sam closes his eyes, counting hard behind them, forty-three, forty-four. When Dean's idle hand isn't yanking his skin apart it's resting against his shoulder, flat and kind of nice, rising with his breathing, slippery with his blood and sweat—he feels in a certain way that that's how Dean's hand should always be, forty-five.

 

Covered in his sweat and blood, boring into his flesh.

 

It'll be Dean's turn in a minute, though he's sitting more at six than forty-seven, lucky son of a bitch. Maybe Sam will twist the forceps a little more than he should, just for sibling rivalry's sake, but only on the first one, and kiss it better after.

 

Lean over, hold your knees, says Dean, and then a wave of hot, stinging, horrible Jack down Sam's back, and he feels his skull tightening, contains his scream to the hollow of his mouth, spits Fuck and drags breath into his nose and out again. There you go. Okay, says Dean. Let me just.

 

His foot is twined around Sam's ankle and he probably doesn't even know it. Sam hangs his head, looking at their legs, dirty, smudged, cut up.

* * *

 

Dean's nakedness says a lot about him, things Sam likes to think about, when he gets the chance. He's sitting with his back to the shower curtain, crosslegged crammed into the tiny stall, while Dean stands above him letting blood run down his front from the six nasty holes in his side. And they're secret things, and no girl who's ever fucked his brother's ever seen them. One specific scar at the hinge of his leg and groin. And the mole that worries him, dead center of his spine. And his heel spurs, his dick, the discoloration from a bad sunburn last summer—meaning practically nothing, to either of them, but Sam likes them. How they make Dean up in their way: busted bones and broken skin and healed fractures and scar tissue stacked up into a person, and a smile on it, and a name. Takes the washrag when Dean hands it down to him and begins to scrub the dirt from his calves, watching flecks of mud piece off and circle the drain between Dean's feet.

 

His back is burning. The soap suds on the floor are turning pink in the streams of blood from Dean's side. Sam reaches out and picks off a piece of grass stuck to the back of Dean's leg.

* * *

 

Sam can't sleep with wet hair, so they wait up, and Dean leans his shin against the small of Sam's back and tries his best not to touch the birdshot holes the way Sam knows he _wants_ to. Kisses Sam instead, absent-like, rolling his forehead across the length of Sam's shoulder and pressing his lips wherever it matters. Sam's hair drips onto the stained white towel where the blood's still not dry. They put their birdshot in a liquor glass, it's sitting on the windowsill.

 

Mm, Dean says in his throat, letting his hands come around and rest on Sam's lap, doing nothing much. Sam's eyelids droop but Dean's hands are real nice to look at, limp like that on his thighs.

 

Go to sleep.

 

Sure.

 

You can.

 

Mm.

 

Sam tucks his head back just enough to press his cheek to the crown of Dean's skull and then pulls it back again, rubbing at his eyes. There's softness here, Dean's breath on him, the humid room, the pulse of the standing fan on top the TV, loll of his neck, damp hair, bed underneath, skin on his skin, even where it hurts. It's never in the car, foot tapping to the radio, smiling and laughing and hollering at passing cops, that Sam feels best, like he could die in that moment a happy man. It's always these, when everything's soft and weary, and Dean's too tired and sore to do anything but kiss the skin above his collarbone. He could blink out like a light and never know the difference.

* * *

 

They stopped the late-night heart-to-hearts a few years back, when sleep turned into something too nice to waste. Instead they fumble into bed in the dark, lit up a little with neon, sighing night noises, pulling on covers. Dean sleeps on his stomach, arm flung out, and Sam on his side tonight, wincing a little but doing just fine all things considered. Their shoulders pushed hard against each other, syncopated breathing filling the bed space between them and emptying it again, a little hole where love goes.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art for 'better'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6662527) by [stormbrite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormbrite/pseuds/stormbrite)




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